The bulk of the following quotes were collected over some years through my subscription to "A Word A Day," the remarkably enlightening, vocabulary building, daily e-mail from Anu Garg.
Along this tree / From root to crown / Ideas flow up / And vetoes down.
-A senior executive, quoted by Peter Drucker
To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five things are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness and kindness.
-Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE)
Life is like a ten-speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use.
-CharlesSchulz, cartoonist (1922-2000)
Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well -- he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
-Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer (1934-1996)
To do nothing is sometimes a good remedy.
-Hippocrates, physician (460-c.377 BCE)
No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place.
-Zen saying
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river
And he's not the same man.
-Heraclitus, philosopher (c. 540-470 BCE)
An approximate answer to the right problem is worth a good deal more than an exact answer to an approximate problem
- J. W. Tukey
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
-Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)
There is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally.
-Learned Hand, jurist (1872-1961)
The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness,
honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.
-John Steinbeck, novelist, Nobel laureate (1902-1968)
To the complaint, 'There are no people in these photographs,' I respond, 'There are always two people: the photographer and the viewer.'
-Ansel Adams, photographer (1902-1984)
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
-Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, and author (1872-1970)
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
-George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)
Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.
-Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense.
-Mark Twain
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
-Charles Darwin, naturalist and author (1809-1882)
We who cut mere stones must always be envisioning cathedrals.
anonymous
Money may be the husk of many things but not the kernel. It brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintance, but not friends; servants, but not loyalty; days of joy, but not peace or happiness.
-Henrik Ibsen, playwright (1828-1906)
Not all those that wander are lost.
-J.R.R. Tolkien, novelist and philologist (1892-1973)
And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
-Anais Nin, writer (1903-1977)
Kindness makes a fellow feel good whether it's being done to him or by him.
-Frank A. Clark
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
-Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)
"Patience is also a form of action.
Auguste Rodin, sculptor (1840-1917)
To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.
-Jorge Luis Borges, writer (1899-1986)
A man said to the universe: "Sir I exist!" "However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."
-Stephen Crane, writer (1871-1900)
I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.
-Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)
I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.
-Marcus Aurelius, philosopher (121-180)
When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.
-Alexander Graham Bell, inventor (1847-1922)
Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
-Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist(1883-1931)
The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
When I can look Life in the eyes,
Grown calm and very coldly wise,
Life will have given me the Truth,
And taken in exchange---my youth.
-Sara Teasdale, poet (1884-1933)
Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all.
-Thomas Szasz, author, professor of psychiatry (1920- )
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.
-H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)
More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
-Woody Allen, author, actor, and filmmaker (1935- )
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.
-Thomas Pynchon, writer (1937- )
Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.
-Bertrand Russell philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
-Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author (1743-1826)
Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought.
-Graham Greene, novelist and journalist (1904-1991)
Doubt everything at least once, even the proposition that two times two equals four.
-Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, scientist and philosopher (1742-1799)
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
-Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author (1743-1826)
The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts.
-Baruch Spinoza, philosopher (1632-1677)
I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
-James Baldwin, writer (1924-1987)
You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
-Naguib Mahfouz, writer (1911- )
The most important discoveries will provide answers to questions that we do not yet know how to ask and will concern objects we have not yet imagined.
-John N. Bahcall, astrophysicist (1935-2005)
People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.
-Dave Barry, author and columnist (1947- )
Learning is weightless, a treasure you can always carry easily.
-Chinese Proverb
Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence.
-Honore de Balzac, novelist (1799-1850)
Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.
-Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963)
Poetry is the clear expression of mixed feelings.
-W.H. Auden, poet (1907-1973)
I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.
-Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963)
I have lost all sense of home, having moved about so much. It means to me now--only that place where the books are kept.
-John Steinbeck, novelist, Nobel laureate (1902-1968)
The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another, and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.
-J.M. Barrie, novelist and playwright (1860-1937)
Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
-Arthur Koestler, novelist and journalist (1905-1983)
Intolerance of ambiguity is the mark of an authoritarian personality.
-Theodor Adorno, philosopher and composer (1903-1969)
A king can stand people fighting but he can't last long if people start thinking.
-Will Rogers, humorist (1879-1935)
If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.
-Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (1920-1992)
"Before criticizing someone, walk a mile in their shoes. Then, when you do criticize them, you will be a mile away and have their shoes."
"Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey"
Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.
-John Adams, 2nd US president (1735-1826)
To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
-Abraham Lincoln, 16th US president (1809-1865)
Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot defend themselves or run away. And few destroyers of trees ever plant any; nor can planting avail much toward restoring our grand aboriginal giants. It took more than three thousand years to make some of the oldest of the Sequoias, trees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra.
-John Muir, naturalist, explorer, and writer(1838-1914)
"Speaking of ranking the various disciplines --
Politicians think they are Economists.
Economists think they are Social Scientists.
Social Scientists think they are Psychologists.
Psychologists think they are Biologists.
Biologists think they are Organic Chemists.
Organic Chemists think they are Physical Chemists.
Physical Chemists think they are Physicists.
Physicists think they are Mathematicians.
Mathematicians think they are God.
God .... ummm.. so happens that God is an Astronomer."
-Vinay L. Kashyap, Astronomer
I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.
-Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., writer (1922- )
A wonderful time — the War:
when money rolled in
and blood rolled out.
But blood
was far away
from here –
Money was near.
-Langston Hughes, poet and novelist (1902-1967)
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
-James Madison, fourth US president (1751-1836)
The horse is not judged by the saddle.
-German proverb
We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
-Edward R. Murrow, journalist (1908-1965)
I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: 'The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair.' In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.
-Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, and author (1872-1970)
This world is divided roughly into three kinds of nations: those that spend lots of money to keep their weight down; those whose people eat to live; and those whose people don't know where their next meal is coming from.
-David S. Landes, author, professor of economics and history (1924- )
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
-Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)
There is nothing so agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as the application of a rough truth.
-Edward Bulwer-Lytton, writer (1803-1873)
The man who prefers his country before any other duty shows the same spirit as the man who surrenders every right to the state. They both deny that right is superior to authority.
-Lord Acton, historian (1834-1902)
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
-Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author (1743-1826)
One of my greatest pleasures in writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position. Then comes the saddening realization that such people rarely read.
-John Kenneth Galbraith, economist (1908-2006)
By the age of six the average child will have completed the basic American education. ... From television, the child will have learned how to pick a lock, commit a fairly elaborate bank holdup, prevent wetness all day long, get the laundry twice as white, and kill people with a variety of sophisticated armaments.
-Russell Baker, columnist and author (1925- )
It takes a certain maturity of mind to accept that nature works as steadily in rust as in rose petals.
-Esther Warner Dendel, writer and artist (1910-2002)
Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true.
-Robert Brault, software developer, writer (1938- )
Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries.
-Christopher Morley, writer (1890-1957)
The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are
permitted to remain children all our lives.
-Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)
The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.
-Lorraine Hansberry, playwright and painter (1930-1965)
Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.
-Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790)
We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.
-Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)
Testing can show the presence of errors, but not their absence.
-Edsger Dijkstra, computer scientist (1930-2002)
Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
-James Baldwin, writer (1924-1987)
If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. It it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
-E.B. White, writer (1899-1985)
We find comfort among those who agree with us, growth among those who don't.
-Frank A. Clark, writer (1911- )
A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author and aviator (1900-1945)
Whenever morality is based on theology, whenever right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established.
-Ludwig Feuerbach, philosopher (1804-1872)
History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.
-Thurgood Marshall, US Supreme Court Justice (1908-1993)
In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have.
-Lee Iacocca, automobile executive (1924- )
We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.
-Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author (1743-1826)
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change;the realist adjusts the sails.
-William Arthur Ward, college administrator, writer (1921-1994)
The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.
-George Baker (1877-1965)
A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.
-Eleanor Roosevelt, diplomat and writer (1884-1962)
Whenever people say 'We mustn't be sentimental,' you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add 'We must be realistic,' they mean they are going to make money out of it.
-Brigid Brophy, writer (1929-1995)
Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like.
-Will Rogers, humorist (1879-1935)
May what I do flow from my like a river, no forcing and no holding back.
Rilke
My greatest skill has been to want but little.
-Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)
This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, argue, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek. To seek: to embrace the questions, be wary of answers.
-Terry Tempest Williams, naturalist and author (1955- )
He who dares not offend cannot be honest.
-Thomas Paine, philosopher and writer (1737-1809)
To freely bloom - that is my definition of success.
-Gerry Spence, lawyer (1929- )
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.
-Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, and author (1872-1970)
A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
-Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)
Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen.
-Louis L'Amour, novelist (1908-1988)
The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.
-Arthur C Clarke, science fiction writer (1917- )
A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.
-Robert A. Heinlein, science-fiction author (1907-1988)
The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.
-Stephen Jay Gould, paleontologist, biologist, author (1941-2002)
pogonotrophy (po-guh-NAW-truh-fee) noun
The growing of a beard.
[From Greek pogon (beard) + -trophy (nourishment, growth).]
Pogonology is the study of beards and pogonotomy is a fancy word for shaving.
misology (mi-SOL-uh-jee) noun
Hatred of logic or reason.
[From Greek miso- (hate) + -logy (science, study).]
One of the indictments of civilizations is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person.
-William Feather, author, editor and publisher (1889-1981)
Do not commit the error, common among the young, of assuming that if you cannot save the whole of mankind, you have failed.
-Jan de Hartog, playwright and novelist (1914-2002)
Do I believe God is going to take away my illness when he turned an entirely deaf ear to the six million Jews who went into the gas chambers?
-Karen Armstrong, author (1944- )
The reward for conformity was that everyone liked you except yourself.
-Rita Mae Brown, writer (1944- )
If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied.
-Rudyard Kipling, author, Nobel laureate (1865-1936)
How can they say my life is not a success? Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten?
-Logan Pearsall Smith, essayist (1865-1946)
What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak.
-George Santayana, philosopher (1863-1952)
The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind.
-Mignon McLaughlin, journalist and author (1913-1983)
Tolerably early in life I discovered that one of the unpardonable sins, in the eyes of most people, is for a man to presume to go about unlabelled. The world regards such a person as the police do an unmuzzled dog, not under proper control.
-Thomas Henry Huxley, biologist and writer (1825-1895)
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
-T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
Wit is educated insolence.
-Aristotle, philosopher (384-322 BCE)
If you want something really important to be done you must not merely satisfy the reason, you must move the heart also.
-Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
